nside our defences,
we can be taming them and tricking them. As for sending them to school
after giving them power, it's like asking a wild beast to sit down to
dinner with us--he wants the whole table and us too. The best education
for the people is government. They're beginning to see that in
Lancashire at last. I ran down to Lancashire for a couple of days on my
landing, and I'm thankful to say Lancashire is preparing to take a
step back. Lancashire leads the country. Lancashire men see what this
Liberalism has done for the Labour-market.'

'Captain Beauchamp considers that the political change coming over the
minds of the manufacturers is due to the large fortunes they have made,'
said Miss Halkett, maliciously associating a Radical prophet with him.

He was unaffected by it, and continued: 'Property is ballast as well
as treasure. I call property funded good sense. I would give it every
privilege. If we are to speak of patriotism, I say the possession of
property guarantees it. I maintain that the lead of men of property is
in most cases sure to be the safe one.'

'I think so,' Colonel Halkett interposed, and he spoke as a man of
property.

Mr. Tuckham grew fervent in his allusions to our wealth and our
commerce. Having won the race and gained the prize, shall we let it
slip out of our grasp? Upon this topic his voice descended to tones
of priestlike awe: for are we not the envy of the world? Our wealth is
countless, fabulous. It may well inspire veneration. And we have won it
with our hands, thanks (he implied it so) to our religion. We are rich
in money and industry, in those two things only, and the corruption
of an energetic industry is constantly threatened by the profusion of
wealth giving it employment. This being the case, either your Radicals
do not know the first conditions of human nature, or they do; and if
they do they are traitors, and the Liberals opening the gates to them
are fools: and some are knaves. We perish as a Great Power if we cease
to look sharp ahead, hold firm together, and make the utmost of what we
possess. The word for the performance of those duties is Toryism: a word
with an older flavour than Conservatism, and Mr. Tuckham preferred it.
By all means let workmen be free men but a man must earn his freedom
daily, or he will become a slave in some form or another: and the way to
earn it is by work and obedience to right direction. In a country like
ours, open on all sides to the co